Re: [PATCH v5 8/9] dax/kmem: add sysfs interface for atomic whole-device hotplug
From: David Hildenbrand (Arm)
Date: Thu Jun 25 2026 - 03:44:03 EST
On 6/24/26 16:57, Gregory Price wrote:
> There is no atomic mechanism to offline and remove an entire
> multi-block DAX kmem device. This is presently done in two steps:
> 1. offline all
> 2. remove all).
>
> This creates a race condition where another entity operates directly
> on the memory blocks and can cause hot-unplug to fail / unbind to
> deadlock.
>
> Add a new 'state' sysfs attribute that enables an atomic whole-device
> hotplug operation across its entire memory region.
>
> daxX.Y/state mirrors the per-block memoryX/state ABI:
> - [offline, online, online_kernel, online_movable]
> - "unplugged" - is added specifically for dax0.0/state
>
> The valid writable states include:
> - "unplugged": memory blocks are not present
> - "online": memory is online, zone chosen by the kernel
> - "online_kernel": memory is online in ZONE_NORMAL
> - "online_movable": memory is online in ZONE_MOVABLE
>
> Valid transitions:
> - unplugged -> online[_kernel|_movable]
> - online[_kernel|_movable] -> unplugged
> - offline -> unplugged
>
> A device can only be onlined from "unplugged", so it must be returned
> there before being onlined into a different state.
>
> For backwards compatibility the memory blocks are always created at
> probe - existing tools expect them to be present after kmem binds.
>
> "offline" is therefore a reportable state but is not writable: it only
> arises from the legacy auto_online_blocks=offline policy. Onlining
> such a device through this attribute requires unplugging it first in
> an effort to get drivers creating DAX devices to set a default.
>
> Unplug is atomic across the whole device: dax_kmem_do_hotremove()
> collects every added range and offlines/removes them in one operation.
> Either the operation succeeds or is entirely rolled back.
>
> Unbind Note:
> We used to call remove_memory() during unbind, which would fire a
> BUG() if any of the memory blocks were online at that time. We lift
> this into a WARN in the cleanup routine and don't attempt hotremove
> if ->state is not DAX_KMEM_UNPLUGGED or MMOP_OFFLINE.
>
> An offline dax device memory is removed on unbind as before.
>
> If online at unbind, the resources are leaked (as before), but now
> we prevent deadlock if a memory region is impossible to hotremove.
>
> Suggested-by: Hannes Reinecke <hare@xxxxxxx>
> Suggested-by: David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Gregory Price <gourry@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-dax | 26 +++
> drivers/base/memory.c | 9 +
Can we have this ...
> drivers/dax/kmem.c | 224 ++++++++++++++++++++----
> include/linux/memory_hotplug.h | 1 +
>
... and this as a separate patch, please?
Nothing else jumped at me.
--
Cheers,
David